or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
March 23, 2006
You've Got To Feel Bad For Dennis Perrin
I don't have any feelings about Christopher Hitchens as an individual. I just pay attention because he's COMEDY GOLD.
Unfortunately for Dennis Perrin, however, he once was good friends with Hitchens. Burdened as Dennis is with human sympathy, he can't observe Hitchens' obsessive self-degredation with the same unseemly glee as me.
Hitchens has actually gotten worse. You can decide for yourself, presuming you wish to waste time on his fantasy musings, but allow me to highlight one consistent falsehood that I thought Hitchens had been shamed into abandoning, though clearly not. In fact, he leads the piece with it:Up until now, I have resisted all urges to assume the mantle of generalship and to describe how I personally would have waged a campaign to liberate Iraq. I became involved in this argument before the Bush administration had been elected, and for me it always was (and still is) a matter of solidarity with the democratic forces in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan and of the need for the United States to change its policy and be on their side.The segment in bold is a bald-faced lie, as I've pointed out before. Again, Hitchens did not come out in favor of "regime change" in Iraq in 1991, 1993 or in 2001. He waited till the last possible second, when his Beltway sources told him in 2002 that the invasion was greenlighted and would be unleashed no matter what. That's when he jumped on-board, and even then he had, in his words to me, "about a zillion" concerns about Bush's ultimate intentions. Once he got past those (which took about five minutes), he fully became the pathetic warmonger who now shouts and belches before us.
And there's more. Poor Dennis.
Posted at March 23, 2006 06:03 AM | TrackBackAnd he didn't even go to Stutts, either.
Posted by: saurabh at March 23, 2006 10:49 AMI think he's in the throes of delirium tremens so naturally he's not going to be well acquainted with the truth and the facts.
Posted by: Maezeppa at March 23, 2006 01:51 PMSarah, since you bring it up: Hitchens went to Stutts' rival school, Keasbey, which naturally filled him with a deep sense of personal shame and rage. While Stutts alums destroy our world through an inflated sense of their own abilities--and a belief that they are entitled to do whatever they please--Keasbey alums destroy things only as an unintended side-effect of trying to destroy people from Stutts.
I only went to Stutts as a Senior. They're surprisingly lenient about transfers, especially if they think you'll make some money. One year of investment = a lifetime of solicitation.
Posted by: Mike of Rugoren at March 23, 2006 02:28 PMPardon me, Saura. These damn eyes...
Posted by: Mike of Rugoren at March 23, 2006 02:29 PMI,too, considered Hitch a friend, though now it is unclear what will happen. But, though I agree with some of Dennis's concerns, I have always liked Hitchens complaint about the fallout of his considerable smoking habit: "It is one thing to explain to your host about the cigarette burns in the sheets, a bit harder to explain the ones in the shower curtain."
Posted by: Elayne at March 23, 2006 03:02 PMFrom biblical matriarch to a revolutionary lizard, so many new identities for our fragrant leader of the nose. :-)
Posted by: Saheli at March 23, 2006 03:03 PMFeh!
I went to Antelope Valley College and California State University, Northridge and I wasn't duped into the fear that Saddam Hussein was threat, nor that he ties to Al Qaeda (imaginary or otherwise), nor that weapons-of-mass-destruction (or their program-related activities) were present (or spirited away on the phantom cargo fleet).
...this trailer-trash hillbilly refused to be hornswaggled by the Bush Clan.
Posted by: Darryl Pearce at March 23, 2006 04:06 PMYou know, I greatly prefer revolutionary lizard to Spanish-aristocrat-with-a-healthy-dose-of-guilt-who-fights-for-the-rights-of-campesinos. That one I just can't stand. Bwrghh...
Posted by: saurabh at March 23, 2006 04:56 PMI feel for Dennis Perrin, but appreciate this confirmation that I'm not losing my memory. After the shocking bonkers-ness of Hitchens' post-September 11th columns, I distinctly remember being relieved to read his reaction to Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech, particularly that he regarded the implicit declaration of war on Iraq as insane. I didn't save that column, though, and now am disinclined to look it up. Maybe Perrin cites it.
After seeing Hitchens say, on some panel discussion in 2003 televised by C-SPAN, how nice it was to be on the side with the cruise missiles, I just quietly wrote him off. It was the way he said it: "Do it to Julia!"
Posted by: Nell at March 25, 2006 03:36 PM
